HerStory (2007): Falling with Hong Kong in women’s writing and dance

Abstract

This article analyses Hong Kong-based choreographer Helen Lai’s work HerStory (2007) in the context of Hong Kong’s handover in 1997 and its impact on modern dance and women’s writing. I examine HerStory’s innovation of a gesture ‐ falling ‐ in multiple registers and argue that the gesture of falling enacts a potential field to articulate the unspeakable, unrecognizable bodily experience. I show the ways HerStory, through falling, undid the boundaries of the rural and urban space, the past and the present, the individual and the collective; and expressed the tensions between women’s corporeal experience and gendered social inscriptions. In the end, I discuss why revisiting these relations can help us better understand Hong Kong’s historical moment.